Contracting for impure public goods
Subtitle: carbon offsets and additionality
By: Charles Mason, Andrew Plantinga
Contributors: Plantinga, Andrew; National Bureau of Economic Research
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 16963; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 16963.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "Governments contracting with private agents for the provision of an impure public good must contend with agents who would potentially supply the good absent any payments.  This additionality problem is centrally important to the use of carbon offsets to mitigate climate change.  We analyze optimal contracts for forest carbon, an important offset category.  A novel national-scale simulation of the contracts is conducted that uses econometric results derived from micro data.  For a 50 million acre increase in forest area, annual government expenditures with optimal contracts are found to be about $4 billion lower compared to costs with a uniform subsidy"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 6/23/2011.

Includes bibliographical references.

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